


nor rivers drown it

by theparadigmshifts



Series: more light [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Sort Of, Stanley Uris Lives, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, That's The Power of Love, bros at first sight, ch 1 is just patty and stan, couple's clown murder, losers show up in ch 2, patty and richie brotp, patty is ride or die and no one will be dying, stanpat - Freeform, this is a patricia blum uris fan account now, we are on lockdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21549028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theparadigmshifts/pseuds/theparadigmshifts
Summary: "We promised to confide in each other, and cherish each other, and sustain each other, and all that jazz.”Stan stares at her, blinks twice."And right now, that means going back to your horror-show hometown, and facing your trauma, and potentially killing a demon. Together."---Or: When Mike calls from Derry, Patty answers the phone instead.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Series: more light [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632832
Comments: 184
Kudos: 1423





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't believe i wrote this in 3 days

When the number with the 207 area code calls, Patricia Blum Uris answers the phone. “Hey,” she says, as though she’s talking to an old friend. 

The voice on the other end is warm, nervous. “Oh,” it says. “Oh, I was calling for Stan, actually?” 

“Ah, he’s still at work.” She cradles the phone between her neck and her shoulder. Her hands are covered in paint, still, and now the phone is, too. She paces while she talks, absently peeling some dried flecks off her arm, by the crook of her elbow. “This is Patty. I guess I should have said “Uris residence,” like Stan does, but that always felt a little silly to me. Don’t tell him I said that.”

There’s a pause. “I - I won’t,” the voice laughs, just a little. “Can you tell him… God. Can you tell him Mike Hanlon called? Mike from Derry?” 

And this is where Patty zeroes in, because _Derry_ \- Derry is her great mystery. It’s Stan’s, technically, but he keeps it locked up inside himself so tight that she knows something happened there, even if Stan won’t tell her what it was. Even if Stan doesn’t remember it in the first place. 

“Sure, Mike from Derry,” Patty says. And, because she can’t help herself: “Old friend?” 

“Too old,” Mike says. 

“I get it, I feel like we were just twenty,” Patty says. She wanders into the kitchen and bumps her hip into one of the junk drawers, grabbing a pen and licking the end. “What’s your number?” 

Mike gives it slowly, and Patty writes it on the inside of her wrist, smudging the ink. “I’ll have him call you back later tonight, if that works,” she says. 

“That works,” Mike says. There’s a pause, like he wants to say something else, and Patty waits. Patty’s always been patient. There’s something she likes about practicing stillness. The cost of patience is time, but the reward is the thing you would never have gotten without it: a confession, a perfect slant of light, a goshawk coming back to its nest for the night. 

“He’s happy, right?” Mike asks, which isn’t at all the question Patty expects, so she keeps waiting. “He’s going to hate this,” Mike says, quietly. 

“Is this about what happened when he was growing up?” Patty asks back, because she’s patient, but she’s also honest. 

“He - sorry, he told you about that?” 

_Bingo_. “He doesn’t remember,” Patty says. “Maybe you can tell me?” 

Mike hesitates again, and Patty knows she’s pushed it too far. “No, that wouldn’t be fair, huh,” she hums. 

“He needs to come home,” Mike says. Stan’s parents moved to Baltimore after he left for college, the only _home_ Patty’s ever associated with him, but she knows Mike means another home, the kind of home you leave as soon as you can. “He promised he would.” 

“I’ll tell him you called,” Patty says. “Thanks, Mike.” 

“Thanks, Patty,” Mike says. “It was nice to meet you. Sort of.” 

And then the line clicks off, and Patty washes the paint off her hands in the kitchen sink, looking out the window facing their backyard. It’s still. The paint runs red down the drain, but Patty doesn’t look. She just keeps watching out the window. 

* * *

Patricia Blum noticed him for the first time at the orientation fair, amid the sea of freshmen. She’d already signed up for improv classes, and volunteering with a local ecology group, and the Jewish campus organization, and even a Rube Goldberg club. Why not? She grinned at every upperclassman she saw, and they all smiled right back at her. Her chest felt like it was bursting with light as she tagged along with her roommate. _I want to remember this_ , she thought to herself. _I want to remember every second of my freshman year_. 

A group of frat-rushers burst into guffaws behind her. “That’s not funny,” she heard a thin voice say, calm and matter-of-fact. She turned to see a boy signing his name at the Hillel table as the pack of boys stared at him in quiet confusion. 

“Are you talking to us?” One of them asked. The boy barely looked up. “Hey, dick. What are you, the comedy police?” 

The boy turned. There was something gentle about the slope of his nose, his long, dark lashes and deep-set eyes. He had the kind of face she wanted to draw, soft-edged and serious like a Baroque painting. 

“If I were, you idiots would be under arrest,” he said, completely deadpan, before adjusting his backpack and walking back into the crowd. It wasn’t a great line, but there was something devastating in the absolute carelessness of the delivery that delighted Patty.

“Who are you staring at, Patricia?” her roommate asked. 

“I’m not sure yet,” she said, as he vanished into the crowd. “But I’m definitely going to find out.” 

She got her chance after the first Hillel meeting of the year. She was in the middle of making a joke about the rabbi to a group of new friends when she glanced over across the room and saw him by the refreshments table, keeping a stubborn grip on his cup of lemonade. _Oh,_ she thought, _it’s you._

He’d been cornered by another student who was talking his ear off about majoring in physics, so loudly that Patty could hear it from where she stood. Something about his stricken expression made her want to laugh, so she did, completely ruining her own punch line. 

He turned his head at the sound of her too-loud laugh, brow pinched in a little divot right between his eyes, but as soon as their eyes met it smoothed out into something soft. She raised her eyebrows at him, angled her head toward the blowhard in her best approximation of _this guy, am I right_? And when he lifted his eyebrows back once, quickly, without moving the rest of his face, she could almost hear him saying _you are right_ in that matter-of-fact voice. 

_I’m going to save him,_ she thought. 

“Sorry, sorry,” she said to her group, eyes shining. She wasn’t even looking at them, anymore. She was still looking at him, and he was still looking back at her. “That joke would have been hilarious if I hadn’t laughed through it, so just pretend I said something really clever. I have to get some more lemonade.” 

She made a beeline for him, shooting a small wave, and that little pinched line appeared again as she watched his face cycle from confusion to nervousness. _Adorable_ , she thought. 

“Hey!” she said brightly, reaching out to tug on his hand, twice. “I’ve been looking all over for you!” 

The blowhard frowned. So did the boy. 

“You promised you’d help me with my art assignment,” she said. 

“I did?” the boy said, a little dazedly, and even _that_ was endearing. He blinked, twice, and finally seemed to realize what Patty was doing. “Oh, right! I did.” His gaze flicked to the blowhard. “Bye,” he said, unceremoniously. 

Patty couldn’t stifle another laugh. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, tugging him by the hand, out the front doors and into the August sun. “I’m Patty,” she said. “And you’re a little slow on the uptake.” 

She expected him to frown again but was pleasantly surprised to startle a laugh out of him, clear and bright like a bell. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “I think I fell asleep with my eyes open listening to that guy.” He paused, worrying his lip between his teeth, like he was debating whether or not to say something else. “Plus -” he started. His eyes weren’t actually brown, like she’d thought. Here in the sunlight she could see that they were more of a hazel, a little closer to green. He had a constellation of little white scars up the side of his face, like acne marks, but strangely symmetrical. 

Patty waited. “Plus?” 

“Plus, I was a real loser in high school. I’m not used to girls talking to me in like, a nice way.” 

The tips of his ears turned pink, and he kept talking. “Oh no. Oh, that was so lame. I wish I hadn’t said that.” 

“I don’t,” Patty grinned. “What’s your name?” 

“Stanley,” he said. “Well, Stan. No nicknames, please.” 

“Stan’s a nickname,” she said. 

“No, not like that, like, uh…” Patty waited for him to finish. “Nevermind,” he said. “I don’t remember what I was going to say.” 

“I really do have an art assignment,” she said. She thought about telling Stan how nice his curls were, or how much she liked the color of his eyes, but she didn’t want to scare him off. She could wait.

She looked at him smiling shyly at her, studied his face for a second, committing it to memory. And she decided, you know what? Nevermind patience. She wanted to see him blush. 

“I need a model,” she said. “And I’m not sure where I’d find another one as cute as you.” 

Stan ducked his head and surprised her again when he looked up and met her eyes steadily, breaking into a toothy smile. “You’ll have to tell me how to pose,” he said. “I don’t really have any modeling experience.” 

“The light’s good right here,” she said. She could feel herself smiling like an idiot, but so was he.

“It is, isn’t it?” he said, putting his hands in the pockets of his shorts and looking around like he’d never seen trees before. “Alright, Patty. Where do you want me?” 

_Right here_ , she thought. _With me_. 

* * *

In November, she convinced him to break into the park after dark, and he snagged his jacket on the fence and looked at her, eyes wide and wild, and she covered his hands with hers and unhooked it for him. 

“You’re always laughing at me, Patty,” he said softly. He was leaning in so close that his curls were brushing her forehead, and she could feel her heart beating in her throat, in her fingers. 

“Never,” she said, through a laugh. “I’m not -”

“I know,” he said, with that steady, quiet smile of his. “You just love to laugh. It’s nice.” 

“I’m always a little too loud,” she said. 

“You’re perfect,” he said. Then he caught up with himself, flushing red. She wondered if he’d walk it back, try to correct himself. He didn’t. He just lifted his eyes back to hers, lifted his eyebrows again, once, quick. She thought about saying it back, but he wouldn’t believe her. So she didn’t say anything at all. 

So she let the warmth fill her chest up, catalogued the moment, and took his hand in hers. “Come on, let’s go.” 

They climbed up onto the ledge of one of the park’s statues, and Stan worried the whole way up, only climbing up after Patty mentioned that she might fall off without someone to hold onto her. He actually believed her, tucking her coat around her in that careful, serious way he did everything. 

“Didn’t you ever do things like this growing up?” She asked him, leaning in close. She could blame the cold. “Going somewhere you weren’t supposed to? A little stupid, a little fun?” When Patty was fifteen years old, she’d broken her ankle trying to get down off the roof of her best friend’s house, her skirt flipping over her head as she fell. It was one of the only things she hadn’t found funny as it happened. 

That wrinkle appeared on his forehead again, and he swallowed once, hard. He looked out across the park instead of looking at her. She could see those tiny little scars along his handsome jawline. She wanted to reach out and touch each one of them. 

“Hey - Stan? What’s going on? Stanley?” He snapped his gaze back to hers, finally, and for just a second, she saw something there that scared her. It didn’t make her afraid for herself. She had a feeling Stan would always make her feel secure, like a lock clicking into place between the two of them. It made her afraid for him. 

“I, uh -” his jaw worked. There was a tremble in his voice. “This is going to sound totally crazy. I’ve never talked to anyone about this.” 

“I’d never think you were crazy, Stan,” Patty said. “Never. Shake on it.” 

She held her hand out, and he took it, holding on tightly. He had a scar there, too, a thin rope across his palm. She ran her thumb across it, back and forth, until he started talking again.

“There’s a lot I don’t remember about my childhood.” 

“Me too,” she said. “I think that’s normal.”

He frowned. “No. No, not like this. There’s this one summer I’m just… I’m just missing these big chunks out of. I remember my bar mitzvah. I remember getting this - this stupid looking bandage across my face, like an old-timey ghost. My mom said it didn’t look stupid, but I know they made fun of me for it. But that’s it. Every time I try to remember more I just…” 

“Can’t,” Patty said.

He nodded. “I’m scared that…” He couldn’t finish the thought, so he tried a different tack. “Sometimes I worry that my brain is protecting me from something. Do you know what I mean?” 

Patty, like the rest of the undecided freshmen casting around desperately for some sort of direction, was enrolled in a dartboard of unrelated classes - art, economics, ecology, intro to psychology. She liked her psych class, but not enough to major in it. She assumed that it would be an exciting enough field for someone who wanted to make big discoveries, but she’d leave those discoveries to someone else. They’d talked about _repressed memories_ though, and _trauma_ , and she looked at Stanley, who was searching her face intently, holding tightly to her hand, and she decided that she wouldn’t ask him to open that box for her. 

“I know what you mean,” she said instead. “When I was twelve, I forgot the word for _purple_.” 

He laughed, surprised, and she grinned. _Good_. “Twelve seems a little old for that,” he said. 

“Twelve was entirely too old for it. It just flew right out of my brain. I tried _blue_ and _red_ and _magenta_ before I remembered the right word.” His grip on her hand loosened. She slid her fingers between his, slowly, and he let her. “It was for my bat mitzvah dress.” 

“What I would give to see that,” he said. 

“My parents will show you pictures,” she said. “Unfortunately.” 

He swallowed again. “Your, uh - your parents?” 

“Ruth and Herbert Blum,” she said, as though she hadn’t just made the most embarrassing slip-up in the world, and he let her change the subject. 

“Tell me something else,” she said. 

“You tell me something,” he said. 

“Alright,” she said. “Sometimes I want to just say, screw it, and try to be an artist - a real artist, you know? But I know no one ever makes it, and I don’t want to be stupid. My parents -”

“-Ruth and Herbert Blum,” he said, that little quirk appearing at the side of his mouth that meant he was trying not to smile. 

“-Ruth and Herbert Blum already think I need to be more practical.” 

Stan hummed. It didn’t mean _yes_ or _no_ , just that he was thinking. “Well, the way I see it,” he said, slowly. Patty loved the way he chose his words, and she found that the word, _love_ \- even so quickly - didn’t scare her. It just made her feel certain of something. “You can be an artist no matter what, can’t you? You can keep drawing and painting. You’re already an artist, even if you don’t get famous.” 

He said it, firm and straightforward, and she felt a swell of affection so strong it almost knocked her off the statue. _He wouldn’t let me fall_ , she thought, nonsensically. _That’s why he’s up here, too_. _He wouldn’t leave me._

“Maybe I’ll be a lot of things,” Patty said, wistfully. “I think there’s time for that.” 

“You’re already a lot of things, alright,” Stan teased, but there was no bite to it. 

“So are you, Stanley Uris,” she said. 

“Nah, I’m boring,” he shrugged. He said it like it was a fact, and she frowned. 

“You’re not boring, Stan,” she said. “It’s important to me that you don’t think that.” 

“I don’t have any big plans or anything,” he said.

“So what?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, you know what, so what!” he said. “I actually - I don’t know why everyone is so obsessed with finding that one perfect thing, anyway. The idea that you have to follow your dreams or die trying… why can’t I just do something that I’m good at, that gives me the space to build a life?” 

Patty smiled. _I think you’re practical enough for the both of us,_ she thought. “That might be the most I’ve ever heard you say at once,” she said instead. 

“Hey,” he said. 

“Hey, yourself. That was beautiful.” 

He was quiet, then, and when Patty looked over, she saw that he’d been staring at her. “Is it my turn to tell you something, now?” he asked. 

She nodded. 

“I really like you, Patty,” he said. “I like you so much I don’t even know what to do with all of it.” 

“Well, that’s good,” she blurted out, “because I think I’m in love with you.”

“Oh, great,” he said. “One-up me.” But when he leaned in and their lips met, and she slid her hand into his curls, thumb on his jaw, he was smiling into the kiss. 

* * *

It’s dark by the time Stan gets home, but he’s brought takeout, so all must be forgiven. 

“Where in the world are you, Patty!” He calls out, and she feels her heart settle. 

“The United States!” she calls. She can _hear_ his eye roll. “Georgia!” 

“The back porch,” he finishes, folding his arms across his chest and smirking fondly at her. 

“Bingo,” she says, grinning at him from where she’s sitting on the ground. 

“You’re too old to be sitting like that,” he says. 

“Just what every woman wants to hear from her husband,” she snorts. 

“We’re both getting too old for it!” He exclaims. “I wear insoles now! I complain about my back!” 

“And you’re so sexy when you do.” 

Patty pushes herself up, and her knees creak when she does, and she shoots her husband a warning look that says _don’t you dare say I told you so_ at the same time as he shoots her one that says _See? I told you so_. 

He pulls her into a one-armed hug, kissing her forehead, her nose, her mouth. He pulls back to squint at her, the corner of his mouth quirking. She loves him. She’s loved him for twenty years, and she’s gonna love him for twenty more, then another twenty. 

“You’ve got paint on your face,” he says, rubbing at her cheek. He pushes her hair behind her ear, following the curve of her chin. “You’re a mess.” 

“Clean me up,” she says. 

He laughs out loud. “Was that dirty talk?” 

“Clean talk,” she says. “Your version of dirty talk. It’s working, I know it is.” 

“Might be,” he says, kissing the palm of her hand. “What’s on your wrist?” 

“Oh, that’s right!” She says. “Earlier -”

“That’s a Derry area code,” he says stiffly. There’s no emotion behind it at all. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, it is. Mike from Derry wanted you to call him back, when you got home. He told me his last name, but I can’t remember - it started with an H, maybe? Or an N?” 

“Mike Hanlon,” Stan breathes, and it’s like he’s dreaming. “I - I haven’t thought about Mike Hanlon in twenty-five years.” 

“Call him back, then, baby!” Patty says, sticking out her arm. They go inside, and she dials for him, watching his face. _He’s happy, right?_ Mike-from-Derry had asked. _He’s going to hate this_ , he’d said. 

She watches him talk. She watches him pace, and laugh softly, and then he stops in the middle of the kitchen, stock-still, and Patty’s heart drops right through her stomach, down onto the tile. He glances up and meets her eyes across the kitchen, and she sees that thing she remembers seeing flashes of, in little moments or in the middle of the night when he woke up sobbing, and she held him until he could breathe steady again, and she asked him, _Stanley, baby, what were you dreaming about_ , and he choked out, desperately _, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t remember_. 

Except right now, when she meets Stan’s eyes, she sees a fear so distilled that it makes her take a step back, a fear so absolute that it crowds her husband out completely. 

Something is wrong. Something is more wrong than it’s ever been since she met Stan, because she has never, never seen him look the way he looks now. 

Well. Once. 

And it’s this memory that drains all the blood out of her face, pounds into her heart. They’d been 29 years old, and they were on a date at the High, and Patty had made a dumb joke about the name while Stan rolled his eyes. They were mostly there for her - _you’re the artist_ , Stan had said, even though it would be more accurate to call her a data scientist, because he’d never forgotten that conversation they’d had in the park the night they kissed for the first time. _You make art. You’re an artist_. 

They held hands all the way through, wandering lazily, until she’d decided she wanted more time to look at the Chuck Close, and he’d smiled and wandered off ahead of her. He wasn’t in the next room when she went looking for him, and she finally spotted his mess of curls in front of a painting of a woman, rendered in dark, smudgy colors, an artist who had clearly taken inspiration from El Greco. 

“There you are,” she’d said, sliding her hand into his back pocket. He didn’t respond, and when she looked at his face, a cold hand of dread closed somewhere inside her chest. His vision was glazed over and he was frozen in place, staring at the painting in front of him. 

“Stan, baby,” she said. She pulled at his hands with hers and was shocked to realize that they were trembling. “Stan, where did you go?” 

In that moment she suddenly remembered a story from undergrad, from the Russian lit class she’d taken, about Dostoevsky looking at a painting of the dead Christ for so long that it brought him to the brink of an epileptic seizure. _A painting like that can make you lose your faith_ , he’d said. His wife had brought him back. How had she done it? 

Patty reached up to Stan’s face, to turn his gaze back to her, not to the painting. “Stan, look at me,” she said, her hand on his jaw. “Look at me, baby.” 

And he’d jumped, heaving in a wet breath like he’d just come up from underwater, like he’d been drowning right here on dry land. “Don’t - don’t,” he said, too loud. People looked over at them. “The blood, you’re gonna get blood on your hands,” he babbled. “Patty, the blood.” 

“Baby, you’re okay,” she said. “There’s no blood. We’re in Atlanta, in the art museum, right?” 

His hand came up to cover hers, dazed. “Right.” His chest was still heaving. 

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not real,” she said.

“It’s not real,” he repeated. “It’s not. It’s not real.” 

“Breathe with me, okay?” she said. “Watch my breaths. In and out.” 

She looked back at the painting for a clue as she walked him out into the parking lot. But it was just a painting. His breathing began to even out out as they walked, and they sat down on the curb together. She laced their hands together but didn’t touch his jaw, just looked at those little white scars again, the punctures in his face, as even as a bite. 

“Let’s go home,” she said. 

He was wrong all day, after, and she didn’t even know what to ask him, how to say _hey, baby, you know I love you, but you had a panic attack at an art museum today, and I think maybe we should dig into that a little bit_. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, hesitantly, as they were getting ready for bed, and he shook his head. 

“Okay,” she’d said. “It’ll look better in the morning, I promise.” 

And she’d left him in the bathroom, then, to take the sleeping pill the doctor had prescribed him after the nightmares had started back up in earnest. She must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew, Stan was shaking her awake, and the display on the clock read 12:46am, and Stan looked terrified and pale and fragile. 

“I took too many, Patty,” he said, and his voice sounded like crumpled paper, like reeds brushing together in the wind. 

“Too many what?” she mumbled, groggy. Stan stumbled forward, and that was enough to wake her up entirely. 

“It was an accident, Patty,” he said. “I just - I just wanted to stop thinking about it. I just wanted to fall asleep.” 

And then he’d fallen to the floor, and she’d called an ambulance, and they’d taken him to the hospital and pumped his stomach. Patty had cried, ugly, heaving sobs, and Stan had, too, apologizing again and again and again. _It was an accident. It was an accident, Patty. I love you so much. I wasn’t trying to - I wasn’t -_

The therapist was convinced that it had really been an accident. The drive home was silent. 

“This, Stan?” Patty had finally said, voice hoarse. “This, we have to talk about.” 

“Okay,” he’d said. “Okay.” 

The way he looks right now reminds her of the way he looked at the painting, like he was possessed by the fear, like it had scooped him hollow until there wasn’t anything left inside of him. 

And in this moment, Patricia Blum Uris knows that she is not going to take her eyes off her husband for one second for the rest of the night. 

He’s standing in the kitchen with an unsettling calm, blank as television static, so she guides the phone out of his hand and presses the end call button. 

“I -” he looks at her, and he sees in her eyes that she knows. “I need - Patty, I can’t -”

He goes into the bathroom upstairs and shuts the door, and Patty thinks about the sleeping pills, and she opens it. He’s sitting on the floor with his head between his legs, and his breathing is coming in fits. He’s hyperventilating worse than she’s ever heard him. 

“You’re too old to sit on the floor,” she says, but he doesn’t answer her. 

“I remember,” he whispers. “But it’s not real. It’s not real, it can’t be real. It can’t be fucking real, this kind of thing doesn’t - it doesn’t exist, Patty, it isn’t real.” 

She sits next to him, easing herself down. “If you need a second -”

His hand shoots out, wrapping itself around her wrist. “Don’t leave.” 

“I won’t.” 

“Don’t leave, Patty.” 

“Stan, I’m not going to -”

“Because if you leave it’s gonna drown me, the remembering.”

“Okay,” she says.

He heaves in a shaky breath, meeting her eyes. “I’m gonna hurt myself,” he says, simply. 

Patty brushes the sweat off his forehead, holding his face in place. She watches his hazel eyes dart frantically around her face, keeping him pinned with her gaze. 

“No you’re not,” she says. “I’m not going anywhere, Stanley Uris, and neither are you. You’re sticking around until your old man hobbies make sense, okay?”

“Hey,” he says, weakly.

“Until our grandkids look at your cute cardigans and your puzzles and birdwatching and you’re yelling at kids to stay off our lawn and stop running so fast.” 

“We can’t have kids, Patty,” he says. “We c-”

“We’re going to adopt them, dummy,” she says. “We’re going to adopt them, and we’re going to make them do their bar mitzvahs or their bat mitzvahs or - or their b’nai mitzvahs.” 

“What’s a b’nai mitzvah?” Stan asks, his breathing evening out. 

“It’s a gender neutral one,” Patty says. “If our kid turns out nonbinary.” 

“Oh,” Stan breaths. “That’s nice.” 

“I read an article,” Patty says, stroking his hair. Stan sags into her like he can’t manage to keep himself upright any longer, and she lets him lower himself into her lap. She doesn’t say anything when he starts to cry. She doesn’t ask him to. She’s been patient for 23 years. He’s going to tell her, now. She can wait a few more minutes. 

* * *

“It doesn’t _fit_ , Patty,” he’s saying. They’re still on the bathroom floor together, and her legs are falling asleep, but she doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare interrupt him, now that he’s finally talking. “There are things that I know about the world, and now… now these things that I _remember_ , and I just can’t be remembering them. They can’t both be real. The things I remember can’t be real in the same universe as you. What kind of world does that make this?” 

_A painting like that can make you lose your faith_ , Patty thinks. 

“A fucked-up one,” she says. She touches his cheek, fingers brushing over each scar. “But I’m real. You can feel me.” 

“I can.” 

“And these scars are real.” 

"Patty-"

"And so is whatever gave them to you."

"Yeah," he chokes out, voice unsteady. It's quiet. She can hear cicadas in the backyard behind them. 

"A lot of kids died in Derry," she says, quietly. He sits up, recoiling from her in horror. "I looked it up. I never wanted to make you talk about it, but I wondered. I knew something must have happened to you." 

"It did," he says, miserably. 

"Tell me," Patty says, reaching out for him again. "From the beginning."

"I can't," he says, still half-dazed with terror. 

"Yes, you can," she says. "Whatever happened then, you survived it. You're strong, Stanley Uris. You're gentle, and you're kind, and you're generous. You can survive this, too." 

His breath hitches. He pulls her in close, onto his lap, and she holds him, too. 

"Betty Ripsome vanished," he says. "I guess that's the beginning, but we didn't know her."

He closes his eyes for just a second, and she watches his dark lashes flutter back open to look at her. _Good_ , thinks Patty. Better for him to see her than the things he’s remembering. "For us - for the seven of us - it started when Bill's brother went missing."

* * *

It takes him a long time, and by the end of it he's wrung out. Patty helps him up, carefully, and makes sure he's lying on the bed. She slips his shoes off for him. Then she goes to their closet, pulls out a carry on, and starts packing. 

"You can't believe me," he says. 

"Sure I can," says Patty. 

"I don't even believe myself."

"Well of course not," she says, throwing a jacket into the bag. "You're the practical one."

He sits up, making a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. "How can you just act like any of this makes sense, like - Patty."

"What?"

"What are you doing?" 

"I'm packing," she says simply, tossing in two sets of underwear.

Stan freezes. "You _what_?"

"Lay back down, baby. I'm not going to wrinkle your shirts."

"My - I'm not worried about my SHIRTS, PATRICIA!" he bursts out. 

"I know, _Stanley_ ," she returns.

"I can't go back there! We - you can't go there, I can't let it suck you in, too! Derry is a black fucking hole, Pat. It's my own personal nightmare. It's not yours."

"Of course it's mine, Stan."

"Patty -"

"No, I want you to remember what's on that ketubah we have in the living room."

"This isn't exactly ketubah territory!"

"Of course it fucking is!" she shouts.

"I don't remember signing that I'd transfer my… my demon clown trauma over to you!"

"Well, you did, Stan! Just like I signed over my body image shit and innate obsession with making sure everyone loves me! We promised to confide in each other, and cherish each other, and sustain each other, and all that jazz.” 

Stan stares at her, blinks twice. 

"And right now, that means going back to your horror-show hometown, and facing your trauma, and potentially killing a demon. Together." 

She heaves a breath. Stan is looking at her like… well, she's not quite sure. 

"I can't lose you," he says.

"Neither can I," she says. Her jaw works, and she feels herself start to cry. "But I almost did." 

"I'm sorry," Stan says. 

"You didn't deserve what happened to you, baby," she says. "I don't know if I've said that yet." 

His eyes are starting to swim with tears again. "You were just a kid. None of this should have happened. But… but you made a promise to your friends, Stan. That's holy. And _I_ made a promise to _you_."

"Patty, I'm not going back there." 

She looks her husband in the eye and thinks about how much she wants to kick the shit out of anything that ever dared to hurt him. She thinks of the way she climbed the statue, first, the way he followed to make sure she'd be safe. 

"Then I'll go for you," she says. "I've always wanted to go to Maine."

He laughs once, sharply, because he knows exactly what she's doing, but he also knows that she's not bluffing. 

"Okay, Patty," he says, and it's exhausted, and frustrated, and terrified, but she can also hear the _I love you_ inside of it. "Let's go to Maine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, throwing this out into ao3 like gob bluth tossing paper into the ocean: find me on tumblr @ [theparadigmshifts](https://theparadigmshifts.tumblr.com/)
> 
> (the title is from song of songs 8:7 - "vast floods cannot quench love / nor rivers drown it")


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patty's made of sunshine.

They’re late to the restaurant, an 80s monstrosity called Jade of the Orient. The Atlanta airport had been a nightmare, but the whole thing still had the haze of a dream around it. Patty had woken up terrified, clinging to Stan's back like a starfish, but he was still there, solid beside her. She could tell he hadn't slept at all. On the plane he'd told her that he'd had a violent, overwhelming urge to cut himself open last night. _Like the blood pact_ , he'd said quietly, then _I hate that you're seeing me like this._ Patty had dug around in her purse, uncapped a pen, and scratched out _i love you, i love you_ on both his wrists.

They're the last ones there, and six pairs of eyes swivel to Stan, to her, and she feels the hush that falls over all of them when they see him. Had they all forgotten each other until now, like Stan had? 

She bites down the urge to fill the silence, and Stan says, "you started without me, assholes?" and the table erupts into a chorus of "Stan!!"s. 

They all get up to hug him, and Patty feels adrift in their flow until a man the very definition of "tall, dark, and handsome" claps her on the shoulder and says "Patty, you came, too!"

She pulls him into a hug, instead, holding tight to the one person who's familiar to her. "Mike from Derry!" she says, and he smiles at her. 

"We'll have to grab another chair for you!” a man with a goatee says, his eyes crinkling kindly. 

“I can sit on Stan’s lap,” Patty says, grinning. “Right, baby?” Everyone whistles, and Stan flushes, grumbling. 

“I like her,” the other woman says - Bev, beautiful and redheaded. 

“Hang on, were we allowed to bring plus ones?” _Richie freaking Tozier_ jokes. Patty recognizes Richie freaking Tozier, because Richie freaking Tozier is _famous_ , like Bill freaking Denbrough is famous. She’s never been a fan of either one of them, but there’s something accessible about Richie here in person. _He’s the only one who came to my bar mitzvah_ , Stan had told her on the plane, and maybe that had softened him for her. 

“She’s my _wife_ ,” Stan says, at the same time as the short man with big, brown eyes says “oh, like you have a plus one to bring, Rich. Wait. Do you, uh? Have someone?” 

“Yeah, Eddie, I do,” Richie says seriously. “It’s just such a shame your mom couldn’t make it tonight.” 

Everyone groans, and Stan covers his face with one of his hands, and Patty laughs out loud at the murderous expression on Eddie’s face, the sheer glee on Richie’s. 

“My mom is _dead_ , asshole!” Eddie shrieks, and Bev bursts out laughing, and the last man (Bill? Ben?) says, “you should have known, man, you walked right into that one.” 

Richie points to Patty with glee. “She’s laughing!! She thinks I’m funny!” 

“It’s because she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Stan says. 

“Nah, Stan the Man, you married someone with _taste_!” Richie crows. “Introduce us.” 

“Everyone, this is Patty,” Stan says, “my -” And he glances at her, and she sees his eyes shine a little bit, and she slips his hand into his and squeezes once, and she sees him settle. “My better half.” 

“Two equal halves,” Patty corrects, looking at him. 

“She’s lying,” Stan says. “She’s the love of my life, but she’s lying.” 

And the others are cooing, and Patty laughs again, and for a minute, she lets herself forget why they’re here in the first place, why there’s ink on Stan’s wrists right now. The kind-eyed man introduces himself as Ben, which makes Bill the last one. 

“Make way for the love of Stan’s life!” Richie says, pulling out the chair he was sitting in and gesturing for her to sit down. 

“I don’t want to steal your seat,” she says. 

“I’ll just sit with the love of _my_ life,” says Richie, and it’s got the cadence of a joke, but Patty looks at his face and thinks she sees something else there, too. “Coming in hot, Eduardo.” 

“Richie, you are _enormous_ , and you are going to _crush_ me,” Eddie gripes, swatting at him with his hands when Richie actually moves as though he’s going to sit on Eddie’s lap. 

“Thanks a lot, honey,” Richie says, sitting on the edge of Eddie’s chair, anyway, one long arm draped across the back of the seat. 

“How did you get _more_ annoying,” Eddie says, ducking his head in what Patty thinks is supposed to look like a scowl.

“Years of practice,” says Richie. But Patty notices that neither of them make any move to get another chair until the waitress comes back to wedge another one in. 

“Okay, what is going on there,” Patty says in Stan’s ear. 

“That’s just Richie and Eddie,” he tells her. “They were always like this. Pretending to fight. Looking for excuses to get in each other’s space.”

Patty glances back over at them just as Richie murmurs _Eds, we have got to get you off WebMD_ in a softer voice than she’d heard him use all night, steeped in affection. She takes a long sip of her water, raising her eyebrows. “Hm.” 

“Oh, come on,” Stan says. “You don’t think…” He trails off, staring at them. Richie is blowing the paper wrapper off the end of his straw, and Eddie is trying desperately not to smile, and Stan looks back at Patty, realization dawning on his face. “Okay actually, you know what? That would explain a lot.” 

“What are you two lovebirds whispering about?” Richie asks, leaning his cheek on his hand and looking between the two of them. 

“Nothing,” Patty smiles. 

“Oh, I see, _nothing_ ,” Richie says in a goofy voice with an absolutely incomprehensible accent, and it shouldn’t be funny, but Patty can’t stop a laugh from bubbling out at the way he delivers it. He’s performing for everyone, but there’s a genuine warmth underneath it, she thinks. 

“Oh my God, Patty,” Stan says, horrified. “Don’t encourage him.” 

“Why not?” Patty asks, grinning. “I like him. He’s funny.” 

Richie grins back as Eddie and Stan protest. He taps a glass with a chopstick and clears his throat. “Did you hear that, everyone? Patty, could you repeat that a little bit louder?” 

“He’s funny?” 

The table erupts in protest, and Patty laughs again. Stan gestures at Patty, eyebrows raised. “You’re not special, Richie,” he says. “She’s always laughing. Patty’s made of sunshine.” 

She feels like it, then, when she hears Stan say it. Can feel it shining right out of her chest, through her eyes and mouth and fingers. 

“Patty, do you have any embarrassing adult-Stan stories for all of us? When did you guys get together?” 

“We were 18,” she says, and Richie’s eyes light up. 

“Oh my God, so you have _all_ the stories. Holy shit.” 

“You’ve been together longer than you haven’t,” Eddie says quietly, surprising her. There's a look in his eyes that takes her a second to place before she realizes it’s something just a little bit softer than grief. 

“Yeah, that’s - that’s crazy, isn’t it?” Stan says from her right. 

“A, like, functional, long-term relationship? With mutual support? Yeah, absolutely crazy.” Richie says. And there’s something sad behind the joke, and Patty kind of wants to say _are you alright, Richie?_ or _what kind of hurt have you been carrying around with you?_ But instead, a smile twitches on her mouth, and she says, “the first time Stan saw a painted bunting in the wild he started crying.” 

And Eddie is laughing, then, and Stan has his hair in his hands like he’s going to tear it out, and Richie is looking at her like she’s given him the world’s most precious gift. 

“Holy shit,” he says. “Holy shit, Patty, you’re the best. Hey, everyone, we’re inducting Patty right now, okay? Patty’s officially a loser.” 

“Thank… you?” Patty says, but everyone else gives a round of applause. “Welcome to the Loser’s Club!” Ben says so sincerely that Patty feels genuinely honored. 

“Thanks, everyone,” she says. “Do I have to give a speech?” 

“No,” says Eddie, at the same time Bev and Richie say “yes,” and she turns to look at Stan, and he just waves his hand and looks proud, happier than she’s seen him since before the phone call. 

“Thank you for such a warm welcome,” she says, lifting up her glass. “I’ve never been so happy to be called a loser. And now I think I finally understand why Stan’s the way he is, so thank you.” 

Everyone laughs, and she sits back down with a little bow. 

“You were right, Cocker Staniel,” Richie says, lifting his eyebrows. “She’s definitely your better half. Patricia Middle Name Uris, I platonically love you. Will you be my new best friend, instead of Stan?” 

“Richard Trashmouth Tozier,” she says seriously, and Bev lets out a whoop next to Stan. “It would be an honor.” 

“You told her my dumb nickname?” Richie asks. 

“I told her everything,” Stan says, and it goes quiet. 

“ _Everything_?” Mike asks, carefully. 

“Everything." Stan's voice cracks around the word.

“For the record,” Patty says, “I think it’s a demon.” 

Everyone looks confused, except Mike, who winces like he’s been caught out. 

“Sorry, _what_?” Eddie asks, and Patty feels like she’s said something stupid, for all of about 25 seconds. Because then everyone starts screaming, and throwing chairs, and Patty can’t see what’s happening, doesn’t understand what’s going on but understands that _something_ must be. 

“Patty?? Patty, do you see it? Patty, fuck, please,” Stan babbles, grabbing at her hand. But she can’t, she can’t see anything, she’s trying but it just looks like a bunch of grown folks having a breakdown in a Chinese restaurant, and Stan grabs at her arm, her face, and says “you have to believe me, baby,” and something turns over inside her, and she thinks about the way that sunlight helps you see what’s right in front of her, and she says “I do, Stan, I do, I believe you,” and he says, “then _look_ ,” and he’s pointing at the table, and she’s following the line of his trembling hand. 

And Patty doesn’t see anything, until, all of a sudden, she does. 

* * *

Patty realizes, now, that she didn't really understand what fear was before this, that kind of life-or-death fear that drills right down through your gut and threatens to take everything away from you. It paralyzes Stan. But it doesn’t paralyze her. It makes her _angry_. It makes her want to cling to life. 

Stan and Patty go to the synagogue to see if one of his bird books is still there, and the new rabbi lets them in. It’s quiet in a way that Patricia hates, desolate inside. Stan leads her to his father’s old office, and she keeps a tight hold on his hand the whole time. 

When they enter the room the door swings shut behind them with a loud _thunk_ , and they both jump, and Patty sees movement out of the corner of her eye. She can feel Stan trembling, and something drips down behind her breastbone like molten gold and hardens. 

“Close your eyes, Stan,” she whispers. And then she understands why Stan broke down at the High, because the most terrifying figure she’s ever seen lurches toward the two of them, out of the shadows. 

Patty pulls down the file cabinet between them and the woman. The woman’s jaw unhinges, and Patty is struggling with the door, and Stan is throwing his body weight against it until he gives up and starts kicking at the doorknob. 

Patty feels a searing pain in her arm, feels something start drinking something essential up from the core of her, but the door splinters open, and the light from the synagogue pours into the room.

"Screw you, demon," she hisses. The light flares brighter, and the woman looks flimsier, somehow, made of canvas and paint. Tangible. Stan tears a hole right through the middle of her, and there's a screech, and Patty is free again.

Stan pulls her out the door and starts running. 

"What about the token?" she shouts, stumbling after him. 

"Fuck the fucking token!" He shouts. He finally turns to look at her, feels her blood slick on his hand, and pulls her down onto the steps with him, pushing her jacket off her shoulders. She hisses in a breath to see the bite marks on her bicep, a perfect red ring around her arm.

"Fuck, Patty," he says. 

"I'm okay," she says. "I'm really okay."

He strips off his own button-down, even though it's perfectly intact and her own jacket is already ruined. She watches him tear off the sleeve with his teeth, looks at the strong line of his arms in his white undershirt as he ties the cloth snugly around her arm. 

She loves him so much she's dizzy with it. 

"Stan?"

"Yeah, baby. What do you need."

"Nothing," she says. "You just look really hot like this." 

And he laughs into his hand, and shakes his head, and she smiles shakily at him, and he kisses her deep, hands running over her like he's making sure she's intact. _You're okay,_ his kiss says. _You're still here_ , hers does. 

* * *

It's all kind of a blur, after that. 

They meet up with some of the others at the clubhouse, grab a hairnet, burn some shit, get lost in a haunted house. Patty sees some things she's never going to unsee. Dead kids. Giant spiders. Stan, naked and blank-eyed in their bath, arm pouring blood in pulses all over their bathroom floor. 

Then she hears this horrible, disembodied voice, and Stan spits out "Pennywise," and Patty thinks that's about about the stupidest name she's heard in her entire life.

"You were always my favorite, Stanley," the voice burbles. "You wanna know why?"

Stan, to his eternal credit, says, "not really." 

"You were always the most afraid," it says, like Stan hasn't even said anything. And it's stupid that _this_ is what makes Patty angry. The murder and the terror is bad enough, but she realizes that this demon is evil in all the meanest, most ordinary ways, too.

"And you still are. You're not a man, Stanley. Hiding behind your wife, like you tried to hide behind your friends?" 

It looms over them, and this time, it looks like a clown. 

"You're a coward, Stanley," it says, giggling. “And I can’t wait to get another taste of that fear, that -”

"Can you shut up for one second?" Patty says. 

The clown turns to her, and opens its dumb mouth again, and Patty knows it's going to try to scare her, too. But it doesn't know Patty like it knows Stan. And it doesn't know Stan like Patty knows Stan.

"Stan is the best man I have ever known," Patty spits, cutting the clown off. "And - and relying on other people isn't weak. It's not cowardly. We need each other. And that's something you could never understand."

The room gets a little brighter. A spike of white hot hate pushes its way through Patty's gut.

"Look at you. You're pathetic. You're alone. You don't have anyone, or anything in this miserable, empty house. You're weak. You pick off _children,_ one at a time, for God's sake.You're the coward, you bitch."

Patty takes a step forward, and it takes a step back. And she hears Stan's sharp gasp, because when she does, the clown gets a little smaller.

 _Interesting_. 

"Stan's got his friends, and he's got me. There is so much fucking love here, and it just makes us _stronger_."

Patty laughs. 

"And that's why we're going to kill you, you stupid fucking clown." 

The flash of fear in its eyes is so quick Patty thinks she might have imagined it, and then it’s gone again, off to terrorize someone else. 

“Holy _shit_ , Patty,” Stan breathes, and he’s looking at her like she hung the moon in the sky, like she really is made of sunshine. “I love you so fucking much.” 

“I love _you_ so fucking much,” she says, squeezing his hand. He pulls her hand up to his mouth, kisses the back of it. 

“I love it when you curse,” he says dreamily. “You never curse.” 

“Duly fucking noted,” she smirks, and they’re just smiling at each other for a second before there’s another creak, somewhere in the house. 

“Let’s find the others,” Stan says. 

“We’re going into the sewer now, aren’t we?” Patty asks.

“Please don’t say it out loud,” Stan says. “I am hanging by a thread here.” 

“We can pretend it’s coca cola.” 

“You know I don’t have a creative bone in my body, baby.” 

“I’ll pretend for both of us.” 

* * *

Stan keeps Patty’s bitten arm out of the greywater. They see Eddie gear back and throw a fencepost like a spear right into the mouth of the monster the stupid fucking clown has turned itself into. 

_It’s too dark down here_ , Patty thinks as they pick their way down, trying to catch up with Eddie. _It’s too dark._ Patty thinks of the monster that turned to canvas in the light. _If you believe it does_ , she hears Bev say. _Patty’s made of sunshine_ , she hears, and she looks at her husband, who’s gritting his teeth and gripping her hand in the darkness, and she thinks, _maybe I am. Maybe down here, I actually am._

And suddenly, she can see Stan’s face, illuminated - not by the blue-white of Eddie’s headlamp or the fire-orange of the clown's maw, but by the kind of warm yellow that bathes their backyard in the summer, filtered through the leaves when they watch birds in the Georgia heat. 

The light only reaches Stan, and Patty realizes that down past all the anger, she’s still afraid, terrified of imagining a life without Stan, or a life he’d have to live without _her_. 

“Patty, look at me,” she hears Stan say, so she does. She turns her back on the monster, and grabs both of his hands, and takes inventory of his hazel eyes, his nose, his jaw, his scars, that swoop of beautiful, dark, curly hair. “That’s it, baby. You’re amazing. We’re gonna be okay. We’re actually gonna make it out of here.” 

She sees the shadows pull back farther, the sunlight fill up the cracks of the cave. She follows the light and sees Eddie leaning over Richie, brushing the hair gently off his forehead, fixing his glasses. She sees Richie startle awake, and Eddie say something to him.

And she watches the light reach the stupid fucking clown as it’s pulling back a wickedly sharp claw, and it stumbles, just a little, as Stan screams, “Eddie, _move_!” And Eddie pulls back and turns to look, and the claw whistles right by him, clipping his arm, spraying rock everywhere when it splinters its way into the ground behind them. Richie pulls Eddie in flush, and Eddie looks dazed, and then they’re running, and Richie is shouting “Stan, Patty, go go go!” 

“We need to make it smaller,” Eddie says when he finds the others. “We can’t kill it like this.” 

Stan looks at Patty, eyes wide. “I think I have an idea.” 

* * *

They’re back at the Townhouse, and they’ve all taken long enough showers that the sewer grime finally feels scrubbed off, and they’re all too exhausted to sleep, so they’re sitting in the lobby together, and the stupid fucking clown is dead. Everyone is giddy with it. The Townhouse is theirs now, other guests be damned. They’re loud and unruly, stealing liquor from behind the bar and rearranging the floor into a new kind of clubhouse.

They’ve pulled all the seating close together so that they can all touch each other. This time, Patty is really sitting on Stan’s lap, and he’s always been embarrassed by PDA, but he’s tired enough to be unselfconscious now - or maybe he just feels at home with these people, this whole extended family she never even knew existed. They’re sitting on the couch next to Bill, whose feet are in Mike’s lap, and Mike’s arm is around Ben, and Bev is on the ground leaning against Ben’s legs, and Richie is flopped down next to her, reaching one socked foot over to kick at Eddie's feet before he pulls them up under himself. They’re a perfect chain, unbroken. 

Stan’s rubbing Patty’s back with one hand and her thigh with the other. She hums softly and leans into him, thinking _we made it, we made it, we made it._

And there’s more to do, when they get back home. There’s therapy for Stan to start, like he should have started ten years ago. They can look for someone who specializes in childhood trauma, and maybe panic disorder, and probably depression, too, because she knows that writing _i love you_ on her husband’s wrists isn’t enough to fight something like that. She knows that you can’t really fix a person by loving them, but she thinks that maybe being loved helps you remember that it’s worth it to try and fix yourself. 

Patty is content to let the chatter move around her like a current in a stream of clear water, thinking that she could fall asleep like this, even though she knows she won’t. Stan noses tiredly behind her ear, and it tickles, so she laughs. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the doctor for this?” he says softly, brushing his fingers over the gauze on her arm. Eddie had pulled out his first aid kit for her, slapping away Stan’s hands when he tried to help because he had _no idea how to dress a wound, were you even going to put neosporin on here, man?_ Patty had felt strangely touched. She assumed this was Eddie’s way of showing affection. 

Patty shakes her head, and Stan frowns. “It might scar, though,” he says worriedly. 

“Good,” she says. 

“Good?” 

“I hope it does scar.” She touches a fingertip to each of the white dots along his jaw, one-two-three-four, like she’s typing in a code, or playing the piano. “Then we can match.” 

And suddenly, he looks like he’s going to cry, and he nestles his face into the crook of her neck, and she tangles her fingers in the hair at the nape of his. “What did I do to deserve you, Patty?” he asks. 

“Nothing,” she says against his forehead. “We just love each other.” 

“One of those unconditional sorts of things, huh?” 

“No, sorry, this is a quid pro quo situation,” Patty says. “Next year we’re going to _my_ hometown to kill a shapeshifting sewer demon.” 

“Okay,” says Stan. “Maybe I can be the brave one, then.” 

“You’re already brave, baby,” says Patty. “All the fucking time.” 

Stan pulls back to smile at her, slow and steady, and raises his eyebrows once, quickly, in that way she loves so much. 

“Hey, do you wanna get out of here?” he asks, straight-faced. And it’s funny, so Patty does what she does best. She laughs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love you, collectively and specifically, hit me up on tumblr @ [theparadigmshifts](https://theparadigmshifts.tumblr.com/) or on twitter @ [twomustards](https://twitter.com/twomustards/)


End file.
